Facebook has developed a new data cache called McDipper that’s essentially memcached rewritten to run on flash memory instead of DRAM, thus saving money while still delivering higher performance than disk. Read more »
Following Fusion-io’s success in selling flash memory cards, EMC is coming out with more flash memory PCIe cards, following Violin Memory releasing its own versions earlier this week. Read more »
New PCIe flash memory cards from Violin Memory will allow for broad enterprise adoption, the company’s CEO says. But the company is not the first to that market. Read more »
Flash memory and database servers are among possible solutions for online dating sites getting swamped with traffic at peak times such as Valentine’s Day. Read more »
Flash storage vendor Violin Memory has acquired appliance maker GridIron Systems to improve performance even more for demanding applications. Even as some are calling for slower flash, Violin thinks speed, cost and reliability don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Read more »
Diablo Technologies is an Ottawa-based startup that has brought flash memory even closer to the processor — making applications run even faster. It has built chip technology as well as software and has raised $28 million to bring the technology to market. Read more »
Is it possible to build a better smartphone for consumers that costs less to produce? Apparently so, if you’re Apple. A preliminary teardown of the iPhone 5 shows that the most expensive iPhone this year is cheaper for Apple to make than the iPhone 4S. Read more »
Violin Memory is a force to be reckoned with in the storage world. It’s not just the industry shift toward solid-state drives replacing slower, less-efficient hard disk drives that’s driving Violin’s value through the roof, though, it’s also the company’s very strategic set of investors. Read more »
Morphlab’s latest mCloud uses uses all solid-state disks while also claiming Amazon Web Services-like pricing. The company’s newest offering, which is part of a partnership with Dell, targets service providers that want to add private cloud computing capabilities that interoperate with AWS as needed. Read more »
Tablets represent the next evolution in the advancement of mobile computing, and by 2015 or 2016, the tablet will begin to replace the laptop and the desktop operating systems market will begin to level off or perhaps decline. Our latest forecast examines these trends in detail. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Analysts at IDC have projected that the dollar per gigabyte price barrier for solid state drives should fall by the second half of this year. What does that mean for data centers, where many operators want to bring down energy usage while speeding up web serving? Read more »
Apple has finally confirmed its purchase of Israel-based Anobit, a company that makes digital signal processing tech to improve the performance of NAND flash used in the iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air among other devices. It could help Apple extend its NAND flash empire further still. Read more »
Apple’s mobile devices tend to have much higher profit margins than the competition, as well as having a strong reputation in terms of build and component quality. A big part of that is due to its unique approach to using NAND flash memory. Read more »
Apple is reportedly just about finished acquiring Israeli flash memory firm Anobit. Last week, reports suggested that Apple was in the process of acquiring the company, and on Tuesday, Israel’s Calcalist reported that Anobit has now informed employees of the deal’s successful completion. Read more »
Reports say Apple is buying a maker of flash memory technology for up to $500 million. Apple hasn’t confirmed or commented on the deal, but it does seem to fit with Apple’s M.O. when it comes to acquisitions and its overarching strategy. Read more »
Cloud provider CloudSigma has become the first to add solid-state-drive storage to its public cloud computing service. It’s designed to better CloudSigma’s price-performance ratio overall, which will bring in more and bigger customers that want to do things in its cloud that they can’t do elsewhere. Read more »
SolidFire, which wants to bring all-solid-state storage to cloud providers serving you, raised an additional $25 million in venture capital bringing its total to $37 million. New investors in this second round include Data Domain veterans as well as former Sun Microsystems CTO Greg Papadopolous. Read more »
Fastly, a startup created this year, is turning the economics of delivering content on it’s head with a content delivery network comprised of solid state drives. By placing two servers packed with SSDs in customers’ data centers, Fastly can speed up the load times. Read more »
With Apple’s special iPhone announcement event coming up Tuesday, Vodafone Germany may have pressed the start button a little early on device listings. Its site featured six varieties of “iPhone 4S” in addition to existing iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS models Monday morning. Read more »
Violin Memory released a new line of all-flash-memory storage arrays yesterday, but my recent discussion with CEO Don Basile was all about the company’s future, which he says includes an upcoming IPO and possibly a flash acquisition or two. Read more »
VMworld can be a lot to digest, but it also can be a good barometer of where IT is and where it’s going. A couple days removed from the show, I gave some thought to the interesting trends I noticed and the insightful discussions I had. Read more »
Nimbus Data Systems today rolled out its second-generation platform and announced online auction giant eBay as a major customer. In fact, eBay has deployed a non-trivial 100TB of Nimbus gear. Have we finally reached the inflection point for primary flash storage? Read more »
Cloud storage startup SolidFire is giving cloud providers early access to its solid-state-disk-based systems for storing customers’ data. The Atlanta-based company is building SSD-based appliances that it says will help ease the migration of enterprise applications into the cloud by significantly boosting storage performance. Read more »
Flash-storage component manufacturer Fusion-io is trading well above its initial public offering price, signaling that investors believe solid-state drives might actually live up to their promise to displace large quantities of spinning disks in enterprise data centers. Read more »
It looks as if solid-state cache specialist Fusion-io’s IPO on Thursday has investors thinking big about the possibilities of flash storage in the enterprise. Flash array maker Violin Memory raised a $40 million round from strategic public-market investors, and a software company called VeloBit emerged from stealth. Read more »
With flash storage subject to production issues and relatively high costs compared to other mobile device components, maybe it’s time to revisit the idea of broadband enabling near-limitless virtual storage. We’re not there just yet, but we’re getting closer due to smarter apps and improved connectivity. Read more »
There could be a delay in iPod production as a result of the closure of a polymer factory, owned by Kureha, near the Japanese earthquake’s epicenter. The polymer is a tiny but important part of lithium ion batteries and Kureha dominates that market. Here’s why: Read more »
According to Violin Memory CEO Donald Basile, Fusion-io’s proposed IPO is just the start of what should be a very busy era for flash. Basile, whose previous job was as chairman and CEO of Fusion-io, sees an impending multi-billion-dollar market, spurred in part by Larry Ellison. Read more »
Cloud computing represents a fundamental technical and business trend, but there are barriers in cloud computing that limit broad cloud-based deployment of scaled enterprise-class services. Hybrid clouds will overcome some of these barriers, but the future requires improvements in cloud architectures and virtualization technologies. Read more »
CacheIQ announced earlier this week that it has raised $6 million for its network file system caching product that offloads data to either DRAM or flash memory. Assuming it can gain a toehold against some established competition, CacheIQ chose a wise market to enter. Read more »
Flash-memory appliance maker Violin Memory has closed $35 million in new funding, further proof that improving the speed of data access is becoming a driving force in enterprise data centers and that flash will be a foundational piece to solving those performance problems. Read more »
If the tale of Schooner Information Technology is any indication, the answer to the titular question is “no.” Today, Schooner, which just under two years ago launched its its high-powered, flash-based database appliance made a hard left turn to selling software only. Read more »
Smart meters, smart thermostats, smart appliances and other smart grid devices have lots and lots of chips in them. Putting all those functions together in one system-on-a-chip can save lots of money and time spent on integration — if they give device makers the right combo. Read more »
The last time I sat down with Raj Parekh was eight years ago. He was involved with Comstellar Technologies, a telecom incubator that he started with Raj Singh (Fiberlane, that turned into Siara Systems, Cerent & Cyras –- all of which sold for many billions of […] Read more »
